


Cocoon

by GulJeri



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 12:18:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GulJeri/pseuds/GulJeri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His eyes are dead, they say. (OST)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cocoon

Swooping down corridors in a black cloud, he heard the children whisper behind his back. He heard them talk in corners. He knew the way in which the other staff said his name, and he felt the judgment of their searching eyes crawl over his skin, no amount of layers protected him from that creeping feeling. He heard the silence in the halls at night, when he walked them alone, cool stone gazing back at him hard and unfeeling and he knew it. His long fingered hands traced patterns in the stone, cold seeping through bones, radiating, mirroring the persistent chill in the center of his chest. The moonlight poured in through slotted windows, making ghosts dance up and down the halls, spirits that looked like children laughing, dancing, a boy and girl who were midnight and sunrise, the most intense shade of black with the hope of a few winking stars in the dim distance, and the glorious, blinding sunrise was she. Together they slid apart, hands parting and fingertips grasping but waving only in the still air of the space between night and dawn when the world has stood quivering upon the fuzzy gray ledge of the unknown. 

Behind him and all around him he could hear the voices that chirped like crickets, whispered like reeds and empty plant husks along a dirty river.

His eyes, they said, are as black as his soul.

His eyes, they said, are dead.

Behind uncared for curtains of hair a mans face hid, aged before it was old, deepened with the creases of a lifetime lived hard. Above the thin cheeks of a man not bothered with eating, were thick black lashes that flashed and flickered, rimming eyes that stayed always vigilant out of habit born into him by fathers, bullies, and mad men who thought they were kings. He knew one must always look, must always be ready, for in the blink of an eye the world could topple.

In the blink of an eye.

One black eye, or two.

Wide with fury and stinging--

Two eyes, one word, green and black collided for one last time and then the emerald jewels were left only as stabbing knives and beacons in the most precious and most troubled parts of his mind. Indeed the world upon the twitching blade of a knife had lurched, had stumbled, had rolled to the very tip and then dropped over, and the falling feeling went on through the endless fingers of space and time. His stomach was never the same again, that constant downward pull, hollow; hollow just like his eyes.

The boy who had begun to smile, the light which had flickered, and for the briefest time burned, had snapped out in the quick gust of wind that had howled down from the castle that day and raced over the campus, and out over the Black Lake, leaving a smoldering wick in its wake. The boy had stepped back. They boy had buried himself inside, lost in his grief, and the young man the boy had often fought with stood up in his stead and numbly moved on seeking the things worthless young men crave: acceptance, appreciation, respect, power. His eyes could no longer behold emeralds, but they met rubies, stained with the deepest, bloodiest red.

He knew that eyes still followed him, and haunted him, from her face, from his, from the mirror in the morning that he tried not to look into. 

He knew they were right, that his eyes were hollow. They had lost their shine long ago, but they had died completely when he wailed before a man in periwinkle robes and lemon drops, half-mooned gaze, and twinkling. It was when his endless fall through space had come to an abrupt halt, his fragile body crashing into the surface of some foreign world where nothing reigned but death, and the impact caused him to shatter to pieces. Up above him the god looked down from beneath the two hovering moons, as the man with the dead eyes, drowned in his tears, made it known that he longed for his own demise. That he had absolutely no wish to continue on this barren alien planet where nothing grew, and no sun shined, and no bird would ever sing. 

But he had been convinced by her eyes. He had picked himself up on trembling hands and knees, crawled around in the sick dirt, and gathered the shards of himself—or the ones he could find—and he gave them to the stupid young man and he locked it all away with the little boy, who looked out from the darkness, clutched his knees, and wept in the corner. The young man stood alone and within, holding the pieces, numb, and angry.

Then the man emerged with his dead eyes.

More like sockets than eyes.

More like holes than windows.

His form rose up from the dust in a posture of purpose: for now his life unfurled to only one cause. He swept through the world with black wings of regret and remorse, grudges and bitterness, and he used them to lash outwards to attack, and he used them to wrap around himself and protect: a cocoon, within a cocoon, within a cocoon.


End file.
